We are living in a society that is entangled in outrage. It’s seen in every area where individuals interact, whether it be in personal, social, workplace or business settings. It is an age of outrage, where emotions are easily triggered and the results that emerge, can range from mildly contentious exchanges, to tragic outcomes. In an age where business relevance matters more than ever, having to contend with generalized outrage, places an even greater charge on the leader’s skillset and on how leadership is deployed.
It is an age where the circularity of the age-old leadership question of whether leaders are made or born, no longer has any relevance to the current circumstances. All business leaders now have to step up and deliver positional value, irrespective of their born or manufactured beginnings. Business leaders should now be preoccupied with the question of how well they are casting their shadows and recasting their environments to create safe spaces for their employee communities.
Business leaders should now be preoccupied with the question of how well they are casting their shadows and recasting their environments to create safe spaces for their employee communities.
Of course, there are those voices that will counter that filling this care gap for employee welfare is overreaching the remit of the business and that people are responsible for their own lives. There would be some truth to this argument, but think of the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others, that would be wasted.
This brings me to the point of how I believe leaders and leadership should be showing up in this age.
Leaders with an undistracted mind and an indestructible focus on creating business constancy and a sense of grounding for their employee communities. These leaders focus on creating calm, harmonious environments that offer employees a refuge from an otherwise calamitous world and are not baited by distractions (which come disguised as opportunities), that throw businesses into unnecessary disequilibrium.
No leader in a position of influence should be bereft of the skill to lead change.
Leaders need to show up healed of emotional trauma and scarring. There’s an abundance of toxic energy that is released at the top of businesses and allowed to ripple unchecked, across the length and breadth of the internal environments. This results in the build-up of an emotional charge that just sits latently, ready to erupt at the slightest trigger. So, there’s a created situation, where Individuals come to work highly charged from their personal lives and leave doubly charged having absorbed the charge in the workplace.
A business that is dominated by leaders who demonstrate mental rigidity, should give up hope of becoming a learning environment, where employees can benefit from exposure to mind-expanding content that can help them to navigate life’s challenges successfully. Mental rigidity opposes three of the most life-sustaining elements…..curiousity, optimism and hope for the future.
Leading in an age of outrage, can be supported by a uniform approach to management across a business. Consistency in applying “managerial best practice,” enables the smooth horizontal collaboration between strategic business units. Just consider the multiple ball dropping and near misses that can be avoided by following a standardized managerial model consistently. Every business should invest in developing such a model to control the controllable risks associated with operational impairment.
In an age of outrage, where the arc of life is shortened by the battles that individuals have to navigate on a daily basis, empathetic leadership should be one of the cornerstones in the governance playbook.
The ability to lead change in a systematic and people-sensitive manner matters now more than ever. Helping individuals to sustain equilibrium amidst the competing and sometimes, conflicting demands of life and work, can boost employee health and accelerate positive business momentum. No leader in a position of influence should be bereft of the skill to lead change.
Additionally, one of the first orders of business when leading change, is to be clear on the culture of the business, so that the style of change, (not the goal of change), can align to the cultural touchpoints for greater consonance, in the rollout of the change. There are exceptions to the change rollout code of course, especially when a business needs to be disrupted with an uncharacteristic wake-up call.
Arguably, leaders will drop the ball from time to time and in those times, it should be appreciated that in the same way that they are expected to give grace to others, they too, are entitled to receive grace.
In an age of outrage, where the arc of life is shortened by the battles that individuals have to navigate on a daily basis, empathetic leadership should be one of the cornerstones in the governance playbook. It’s important to remember that in many businesses, the incidence of collisions has quadrupled. There are collisions that occur around values, personal styles, multiple generations, personalities, performance standards, team dynamics and internal culture variations. These collisions, if not resolved, can turn out to be counterproductive to progress.
Arguably, leaders will drop the ball from time to time and in those times, it should be appreciated that in the same way that they are expected to give grace to others, they too, are entitled to receive grace.
Leaders stand as lightning rods in the middle of the tumult of any business. Theirs is the delicate dance between being sensitive when circumstances require a warm heart and being desensitized when circumstances require a cold head.
Arguably, leaders will drop the ball from time to time and in those times, it should be appreciated that in the same way that they are expected to give grace to others, they too, are entitled to receive grace.